ERP Heavy Customization Good or Bad

As we, all know that every organization follows certain processes to ensure that they are on top when it comes to growth and productivity. ERP implementation with the standard feature is one part whereas there are few areas where a company needs to be dependent on customization of certain areas or module so to ensure that business processes are the perfectly implemented in an ERP system. Nowadays ERP customization is becoming essential part due to the different following reason.

1. The company does not want to change their existing business processes.

2. The areas or modules which company is looking out for is not available in the ERP software so we need to go for customization.

In this post, we will cover why we must avoid heavy customization in an ERP system. Simple customization or configurations of ERP with settings can be completed quickly but when it comes to complex customization in an ERP system there are various problems arise, which is as follows:

Time Period Increases – Customizations in an ERP solution increases the time period of the project.

Pricing of Project – When the period of the projects increases, it will increase the cost of the overall project. There are certain situations where the customization cost is higher than the implementation cost due to loads of complexities. Think twice before you decide the customization level.

Enhance Risk – Complex customization increases the risk of failure because new customization needs a proper foundation of understanding the need of the customer and if the solution doesn’t suit your requirements due to low project control than that particular customization enhance the risk of wasting money, time and resources.

An issue in Migration – When you develop a customized area or module as per your business process requirements then Migration of that particular module to the new version can be too much time consuming if there are standard features upgrades and migration can be done easily.

Apart from the above, a company faces many other issues when they carry out heavy customization. Therefore, we suggest that complex customization can be avoided as to ensure the cost of development is less and your organization or department do not need to wait for a long to use the system. If you check all these points these pain points of extreme customization in ERP it lies to the organization and not to the vendor as whatever changes an organization need, ERP vendor can perform based on their capabilities and experience.

Many of the companies today avoid heavy customization. However because of too many decision makers from each department who ask for small customization in every functionality of ERP solution these issues make the overall customization heavy and lengthy.

Tips on Improvising Customization during ERP Software Development

1. Configuration and Customization differ

Both the term seems to be similar and often get confused by the developer and by the organization. Remember that customization is not Configuration – Configuration in an ERP software includes setting up of fields, parameters and workflows these are small changes, which do not require customization in the source code of the project or need not add a new line of code. Whereas customization requires either creation of a new module from scratch by adding a new line of code which also falls under new development category.

2. Analysis of Business Requirements

Make sure that Business requirement analysis team have covered the area of customization properly and it is properly understood by the Project management team and technical team as sometimes-low understanding or misunderstanding of a particular area can lead to failure.

3. Choose the Proper Methodology

Methodology during the implementation also performs a very crucial role. You can apply waterfall method when you know the work is related to configuration and installation but when it comes to new module development the vendor and organization needs to be communicated powerfully so to ensure the customization is going on the correct route.

4. Change is good but not during Customization

Always clearly specify the customization you are looking out for and freeze them in advance there are some cases where customization even changes during or after the implementation which create more problems compared to extreme customization.

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